| Explore | We all know that plants need water, sun and food to grow, they also produce sugar and eat it as a type of energy/ food. We also know that there are a lot of different types of plants and they all need different amounts of water, food and sunlight and different climates and seasons. We all also learned all of that stuff in class. (not the sugar part) We wonder can any plants grow in the winter, for example. Can any plants grow when there is snow? Do any plants take a different liquid that is not water? Since plants have roots, what happens when one plant's roots hit another plant's roots? |
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| Research Question | We want to study water. Maybe how the temperature, amount or mudiness affects seed germination. We came up with these questions by thinking of what things can change the water and make it different and if those things would actually affect the plant.These questions fit the topic because it takes one of the big factors that affect seed germination which is water and then we came up with ideas on how to change the water so we could see the effects of different types of water. |
| Predictions | We think that the possible outcomes given the variables that we have are that some seeds might not grow, some might grow a lot in a short amount of time, and some might grow a lot but in more time. Our explanation for why and how we think this will happen is that we think different amounts of temperature (or whichever element we use) can affect plant growth depending on how much or how little, or how hot or cold the plant is. We might also want to study different plants and which one takes which resourses, and what plants are at “the top of the food chain” and some predictions I have for that is that plants that need a lot of resources to grow might overpower those that don’t need as many resources |
| Experimental Design | We have 4 petri dishes. They are all lined with paper towels and pre-wiped with alcohol and each contain 6 mustard seeds. The control dish gets 20 drops of water, and the others ones have 10, 30, 40 drops of water. We watered them before putting the seeds in and will water them every monday, wednsday, and friday. |
| Conclusion | When we were gone for a week we were not able to water the plants or collect measurements and observations. This may have affected our results and made our experiment unreplicable. This will go down as human error. Some questions we have are how would our experiment be different if we had a more consistent watering schedule? Also why did only one petri dish survive the week we are away. These results are important because companies could use this information to help more efficiently grow plants. This information could also help countries decide when to make it rain because there is a country that stimulates rain artificially and their technique could be our future. In conclusion, we learned that mustard seeds need more water than we thought and just a little more can make a big difference. We also learned that things like missing a couple days of watering is human error and makes your experiment unreplicable. We look forward to continue |
| Investigation Theme | WOS |
| Teacher Name | Jeff Porter |
| School Name | San Francisco Friends School |
| Session | Spring 2023 |
| About this Project | The relationship between the mentor and this team, The Mustard Farmers, is one of the highlights of their project. In reading their online communication, it is evident that they have learned so much. Best of all, they have been encouraged to continue to follow through on their project and apply their understanding to new experiments! -- Jeff Porter, Teacher |